nakedjen

That Old Squeaky Wheel

Philadelphia 1987

That May night, I danced hard. Without shoes. There were never shoes. My tiny feet were black, sparkles of street detritus glinting upwards as I whirled in endless circles determined for my heart, my head, to connect with some distant promised spark in a galaxy far away. 

The air was pungent with burning ganja and opiates and the sweat of other gyrating souls. They all pressed against me, took up too much space, hugged me like an overbearing and ugly uncle and made it much too difficult to breathe. 

I knew I was going to pass out. That this would all end badly.  I also really believed that as long as the notes found me, as long as I kept on spinning, as long as I kept on moving, there was no other reason to be alive.

You're either on the bus or you're not on the bus.  If you miss the bus, you can find it again.

Sometimes, you just need one more show.

 

Philadelphia 2012

This night, that same air is thick with the sweat of a thousand souls with eyes silently watching. Some stand in lines outside soup kitchen doors that will not open until tomorrow morning.  There's kindness and company in the waiting.

There are black souls astride curbs with carts and plastic bags stuffed with plastic bags, and others standing sentry in doorways, perfectly still, guards of the abandoned lives that once occupied all the rooms inside. 

The air presses into water droplets and rolls into my eyes, blurring my vision with outside tears, washing the colors, giving everything a gaussian neon glow.

My professor has brought me here. 

I'm wearing cool shoes and walking in straight lines and sharing stories with academics inside the cool comfort of airconditioned rooms in convention gatherings.

My head spins wildly, searching for words and sparks of brilliance, while I stand smiling, pefectly still. 

I have to remember that I can still breathe and this will not end badly.

 

(I am still, and always will be, on the bus).

 

 

Family is Everything

I wanted to think for myself.  I wanted to become somebody.

One of the best documentary films that I saw last year was SONS OF PERDITION, a truly thoughtful and provocative film directed by Tyler Measom and Jenny Merten that followed the lives of three boys who were outcast from The Crick, Warren Jeff's FLDS polygamist community that is found in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah. 

It is no secret that boys are a threat in polygamist communities, especially teenage boys, and these boys are systematically exiled from the only homes and community they have known their whole lives to a world that they are ill-equipped to live in.  Known locally as the Lost Boys, there are limited resources available for them and many turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the separation from their families and often find themselves on the wrong side of the law. 

This is a very real problem, a human problem, and this film follows the journey of three Lost Boys for four years as they navigate life outside their community attempting to sort out the scars of their former life, their individual heartbreak and losses, their struggles with post-traumatic religious stress disorders and their true discovery of real independence.  

SONS OF PERDITION is a film I believe that absolutely everyone should see because the more we understand, the more we all know, the more compassion we all share for one another. 

 

Lucky for those of us living in Utah and Arizona, SONS OF PERDITION is now screening locally.  I want everyone to go see this film and the first five (5) of you who leave me a comment saying you can join me will get to go for FREE this FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2011, at the TOWER THEATRE in Salt Lake City, Utah.  You'll be my special guests and I'll do my very best to make certain you get a chance to meet Tyler Measom and the special guests in attendance.

* Remember that the first five commenters will get to be MY GUEST for the Friday the 18th 7:00 p.m. screening ~ this is my gift to you!

 It took lots of guts from lots of beautiful people to share this story.  I hope you'll share it with everyone you know.

ADDENDUM:  I want to personally thank all of you who joined me at the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake City to see this film.  We had a huge turn out and there were lots of thoughtful questions asked to both the director and to the boys who were there for the screening.  My sister, NeverNakedBeth attended and her one criticism of the film that I hadn't even thought about was that it did not do quite enough to establish that the FLDS church and tenets are truly separate from those of the LDS church.  She is concerned, as a practicing and faithful Mormon, that this film will confuse those beyond Utah about the Mormon Church.  I believe, honestly, that any film or media that encourages us to examine and question our own beliefs and what we think we know is always a welcome addition to the dialogue.  My hope is that those who see this film would not just assume this film holds the gospel truth.  Each of us, actually, holds our own truth, as I believe all of you know.  The common ground is where we all meet to share our truths and love one another through our differences.

There's been quite a bit of traffic here looking for specific information about the FLDS, Warren Jeffs and polygamy.  Today there was an article published on SALON that further illuminates the troubles in the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint church.  I'm linking to it as a courtesy. 

Crown On, Somewhat Crooked, But Still Fairy Beautiful

So here it is. I've danced on the planet for another 365 days (or nearly that) as it's cruised its trajectory around the sun and I find myself back here, back where it is those days when I am perhaps my most authentic self, where I am, truly, Nakedjen.  The one who sprouts her fairy wings from the hidden folds of her back, the one who douses herself from the tips of her goldie locks to the tips of her tiny toes in all that glitters, the one who will not stop, no just can not possibly stop, not for a million dollars will she stop smiling. 

That Nakedjen.

It's time for the fair.  My fair, but your fair and his fair and her fair, too.  It is a fair that is part of all of our collective consciousness and that fills me to overflowing with love and goodness and the very things that allow me to just be the me that I am throughout the rest of the year.

(I can not wait to get there. It's going to be my most spectacularly naked and best year yet. Meet me on the path and give me a huge hug hello, won't you? Yes, please. Definitely, please).

This is my church, where I go to pray, where I sing with the holy voices of the choir of all humanity.

This is me. I am it. We are most definitely one.

The Fair. The Fair. The Fair.

 

If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.

Many years ago, many many years ago, long before some of you were probably born, he was born.  I'm told that his own childhood was not that of lollipops and sunshine, but one of violence and abuse and drugs and incarceration.  Mental institutions and juvenile detention employed as places to keep him safe from his own relatives. 

Lessons learned there only provoked him to harder and more criminal activities and more emotional and sexual abuse all before he was eighteen years old.  By the time he was sixteen he was already a father, addicted to drugs and was angry at just about everything and everyone in the entire world.

He's committed a very long list of heinous and unforgivable crimes.  Some would say his childhood of neglect, where society chose to quite literally ignore him and what was truly happening to him, created the monster that he is and others will be quick to point out that children are capable of surviving far worse and not choosing a life of robbery sprees, escapes from prisons and multiple murderous rages.

There are never any good excuses for a human being to choose to take the life of another.

I am not going to make them for this man or for any other man. 

Tonight, though, the State of Utah will choose to take his life in my name.  They call it justice.  I call it murder. I am not God, none of us are and we should not be making these life decisions. Any of us.

I understand the impassioned voices that cry that he's taken three lives.  That there must be blood atonement.  An eye for an eye.  It is a very human response to the very awful crimes that this man has committed. 

I just have to ask, though.  How are we any better, truthfully, any better at all, by killing this man than he is in the killing of others?  His executioners, tonight, are taking a human life.  Why is this okay?  If you were handed the rifle tonight, could you truly pull the trigger?  If you are a citizen of Utah, tonight you're doing just that.

He is a human being.  He has a heart.  He has children and grandchildren.  He committed horrific crimes.  But our own crimes against humanity are just as horrific and we are just as complicit when we commit murder to teach our children that killing people is wrong.

NOTE: This post is being featured on BLOGHER today (June 22, 2010) and if you'd like to participate in a larger community discussion about the Death Penalty, I invite you to go over there.

These are My People, This is My Tribe

Just one more thing.  I know, I know.  I've blogged my brains out today.  Clearly.  They're splattered there on the floor and the only real reason Stella is not lapping them up is because she prefers the first edition words of famous authors on archival bound paper.  Not splattered brains.  Lucky for me.

We all know, or those who have been paying attention at least know, that I followed those boys who called themselves the Grateful Dead around for far too many years and way too many brain cells.  I spent many a New Year's Eve celebrating with the band until the wee hours of the morning and I am still, honestly, at a bit of a loss when New Year's Eve rolls around each year and I realize that I will not be spending it in jam-packed arena with all my best friends writhing and grooving to songs I've heard at least a hundred times before.

Given all of that, you'd think that I'd be sharing with you my favourite moment, my favourite song from all those nights spent grooving with my very favourite of bands.

This isn't about all those New Years Eves, though. 

This is about another New Years Eve.  Spent with one of my other most favourite musicians.  A man who sings with passion and soul and a glory that makes my spine tingle.  This is about a New Years Eve spent in an intimate coastal lodge, before a roaring fire, dancing with angelic children and earth goddesses and mountain men.  This is about a New Years Eve that made me realize that music, all music, is a gift that will transcend even the most heartbreaking and saddest and loneliest of personal moments and remind us that life is still beautiful, that it is still a gift, that it is to be, well, lived.

This is about a New Years Eve spent wrapped and embraced in the arms of my people, of my tribe.  They really and truly love me.  Just as I am.  Then, now and forever.  

10 Glorious Peasant

Clap Clap Clap...The Fair! The Fair! The Fair!

Wings - Check.
Fairy Skirt - Check.
Glitter - Check.

Whatever else I've forgotten, well, I'll just punt.  Or just go naked.  They don't call me NakedJen for nothing, you know.

If you haven't guessed, it's time for the fair.  Or as I say around here, "Clap,clap,clap,clap...The Fair! The Fair! The Fair!"  This is said in the most non-Ann Taylor* high-pitched squeeky little girl voice you can possibly imagine.  Actually imagine that voice and then imagine it as a 36RPM record played at 78RPM's instead.  Now you're getting close to the voice.

LaVonne who was Born Famous is here to take care of Buddha and Stella, lest you believe that I would just leave them here with a big pile of food and bowl of water and tell them to fend for themselves.  As if.  I'd take them to the fair, but dogs are not allowed.  And with good reason.  They'll have a much better time here with LaVonne, anyway.  Beach trips filled with rainbow balls flying through the air.  I think they're the ones who will be tripping.

Meanwhile, their dogmama will be drivedrivedriving for ten hours to her favorite cozy little magical wonderful place in Oregon.  It's her religion.  And no one, not even Mormon Sister NeverNakedBeth, will ever convince her that there's a better religion worth having.

Permagrin's in place.  Glitter spread all around.  It's fair time.  And I've sprouted my wings.

*There are many blog readers who upon meeting me in real life insist that I don't sound like they expected and instead I sound like a woman who works at Ann Taylor.  Can you imagine that?

Sacred Undergarments for Everyone!

The other evening I called NeverNakedBeth to ask her a question about those undergarments that Mormon’s wear.  I was truly wondering to myself when, exactly, Heather and Justin, her children, were going to start wearing them.  Was it something they just decided to do?  Or was there some special moment in a Mormon child’s life, like when a girl gets her period, when they are deemed “ready” by their Lord to don those funny underwear? 

So I called up NeverNakedBeth because when I asked the Oracle this question, aka the Internet, all I came up with were lots of links to what I can only presume are folks who have become disillusioned with the Mormon faith or who were never Mormon’s in the first place and who are now hawking their special underwear on eBay. 

NeverNakedBeth answered the phone and before I could even ask my question, she shot out with “What do you want, NakedJen?” in a really defensive tone.  Now, it’s not like I was calling to ask how many cups of mayonnaise to put in my box chocolate cake mix.  We all know that NakedJen never uses mayonnaise for anything and she doesn’t use box mixes, either.  But my Mormon sister uses both.  I think it’s part of her religion or something.  All I know is that she has a walk-in closet in her basement, people, that is stockpiled with enough mayonnaise and canned green beans and chocolate cake mixes for all of us to eat into the next millennium.  No joke.  If ever there is a mayonnaise shortage, it will be because my sister and her Mormon brethren have decided to horde all of it just in case of impending doom.  Personally, should impending doom show its face, and the choice is take the doom or the mayonnaise and the boxed chocolate cake?  I think I might have to take the doom.  Because honestly, a life of mayo and boxed chocolate cake is not really a life that I’m really willing to live.  Then again, NeverNakedBeth hasn’t even offered to share her Doomsday closet with me.  I have a feeling should impending doom be upon me, I’m going to have to make do with all the herbs I’ve got stashed for my holistic practice and the organic dog food I’ve got stockpiled for the puppies. 

But let’s get back to the underwear.

So I told NeverNakedBeth that I was actually not calling to ask about chocolate cake or about mayonnaise, that I had a very important question.  I wanted to know when her children were going to start wearing the very special Mormon undergarments.  And I told her how the Internet was full of links to folks selling them on eBay.  Well, that bit of news was met with consternation and outrage.

“They can’t be authentic!  Who would do such a thing?!”

“I don’t know, NeverNakedBeth.  I’m just telling you, I can’t find out what age you are when you start wearing them.  Can’t you just tell me?!”

“But whose selling them on eBay.  That’s just not right.  And who would buy them on eBay?  Who wants used Mormon undergarments?  What kind of kinky thing is that?”

Perhaps that Big Love show is creating a bigger stir in the loins of men and women across America, I offered.  Perhaps folks just want to be like the women and men on that show?  I haven’t seen it, but maybe everyone wants some of those undergarments for themselves and if they’re used, they feel they’re holier or more special or something?

“Oh.  It’s just terrible!  That show.  I haven’t seen it, but we all can’t stand it!” 

“You haven’t seen it, but you can’t stand it?  How can you not stand something you haven’t seen?”

“Nakedjen, go to www.lds.org.  It will answer all your questions.  You can’t just choose to wear the undergarments.   You have to be CHOSEN to wear the undergarments.  My kids might never wear them.”

“So even though you and Scott wear them, your kids might not?”

“Nope.  Not unless they make covenants of righteousness in the Temple.” 

NeverNakedBeth wouldn’t elaborate about these covenants.  We often part ways when it comes to talking about anything that has to do with the Temple.  I have quite an issue with the Mormons and their temples because they build these beautiful buildings that are the sacred homes of God and then decide who can and can not enter them.  Even within their own religion.  To me, Nakedjen, my relationship with god, God, goddess, Buddha, whomever I choose to believe in, is a veryveryvery personal one and not one that can be judged by someone other than me.  When NeverNakedBeth was married in the Temple, the Mormon’s would not allow me to attend because I was not, a) Mormon and b) worthy to enter.  There were many fireworks that day at that Temple.  We all know that Nakedjen does not like to be told NO.  Not one bit.

So the answer to my question is that there is no age when a Mormon starts wearing those sacred undergarments.  And some Mormon’s never wear them at all, which is actually more interesting to me. Since both NeverNakedBeth and her husband wear them and they’re really the only Mormon’s I know intimately, I figured ALL Mormon’s wore them. 

But if you want to wear them and get yourself a couple extra wives like that guy on Big Love, eBay has lots of used ones for sale.  The wives you probably can find right here.

 

Putting A Good Thing Out Into The Universe

Magical.  It was simply magical.  I have been told that I say this every single year, but honestly sweartogodandhopetodie, this was the best fair ever.  Absolutely ever.  In all of my seventeen years, this was the one that put the cherry on top of the big hot fudge sundae.  Or maybe it was the one that put the organic chocolate chips in the vegan Clyde's cookies.  It was just full of sweetness and goodness and everything grand. 

Some people cry at weddings.  I most definitely cry at the fair.  It never fails that the moment I walk through the Dragon Entrance and hear the music wafting from the Blue Moon Stage and see all my fine fairy folk swarming about on the paths, I burst into tears.  I get overwhelmed with happiness.  I just know that I have finally come home. 

There were magical and special moments at every turn at this fair.  I saw old friends.  I made new friends.  I sat naked (yes naked) at the Ritz with Andrew Weil and discussed herbs and organics and Dreamsweet and the state of health of our country.  It was such an amazing moment for me and he was really encouraging about the teas and the work that I’m doing.   

DearSweetDave and I met Maid Marian.  This beautiful goddess of a woman who is involved in Burning Man.  She was such a delightful soul and we felt such a heart connection with her.  We talked all about blogging, of all things.  And community.  And how the fair compared to Burning Man (as DearSweetDave and I have never even been!). 

We were able to stay in the fair after closing on Friday night and attend a talk by three wonderful and inspiring counter-culture revolutionaries.  One of them was Stephen Gaskin.  DearSweetDave had never heard him speak before and was really taken (and Stephen was taken with him).  Afterwards, they chatted and I got to gush to Stephen all about his wife, Ina May, and how her book had been the catalyst for my becoming a doula.  He was just completely lovely. 

We saw our old friends Martin and Erin and their adorable kids who have moved from Santa Cruz to Eugene.  It was all quite by accident, but so perfect.  And we connected with our dear friend, Rob, whom we see at the fair every single year and never seem to see anytime else even though he lives in San Francisco. 

I bought DearSweetDave a Utilikilt as an anniversary present and we both had a blast getting fitted.  Those boys in the Utilikilt booth are to be commended for encouraging me to get naked, all the way naked!  We hooked up with both of his sisters and our nephew Jadon off and on and spent time dancing to the music of old favorites and also checking out new bands, as well.  We took a nap in John’s tent on Saturday so we could avoid the sweep and then spent Saturday night checking out the various magical light shows and parts of the annual midnight show. 

I wandered the paths in glitter boots and my fairy wings that took the fair by storm (I had one fair goer tell me that she was going to jump me for my costume) and was even recognized as Nakedjen by a first time fair goer who had been told by my dear neighbor Kath to look for me.  She found me even though I was wearing clothes.

Perhaps my most magical moment came as I was wandering alone past one of the children’s play areas.   Suddenly this radiant child dressed head to toe in purple velvet came swooping towards me and grabbed onto my very full fairy skirt.  She beamed up at me with her large brown eyes and gasped, “You’re the very fairy I dreamed of!”  I quickly asked her what her wish was, but she told me I had already made it come true.  Seeing me, in the flesh, had proved to her that fairies were real.  It took everything I had not to burst into tears.  Children know.  Don’t ever doubt them when it comes to the authenticity of fairies. 

It was the first fair where I chose not to bare my breasts and go naked among the masses.  Imagine that?!  I actually felt kind of like a poser on Sunday as I opted to just wear jeans and a t-shirt (the horrors), but DearSweetDave insisted that I was still going to get noticed and I did get loads of compliments on my pink fuzzy hat.  Go figure.

And the food.  My goodness the food.  Perhaps my ONLY disappointment in the entire weekend was that the Tofu Palace, for whatever reason, decided to close up shop early on Sunday.   I had planned to eat my dinner there on Sunday night, but was sorely disappointed when I found that it was closed and the Tofu Tia was going to just have to be something of my dreams.  I consoled myself with Rising Moon Ravioli that absolutely NEVER disappoints and the closed Tofu Palace actually gave us another opportunity to share hugs and love with Maid Marian, so it was, as brother NakedIan would say, “All Good”. 

Honestly, it’s hard to convey in words just how special and “all good” the entire fair experience was.  I keep telling everyone that they really need to come to the fair to understand.   It’s just something that you have to experience for yourself.  I always tell folks that it’s my religion.  And quite frankly, this year was more like a religious experience than any other.  I was just in such ecstasy the entire time.  A big perma grin on my face.  Floating along, lighter than air.  My heart opened up wide.  Really, really, really wide.